When I first heard of Hyrox I assumed it was a new brand of overpriced bottled H2O like Fiji or SmartWater. My flatmate thought it was a rodent. Turns out, she was thinking of a hyrax (an East African oversized guinea pig). Hyrox, we learnt, is a fitness race: like CrossFit only cooler because everyone in London is doing it.
Founded in Germany in 2017, Hyrox has reportedly experienced a 1,000 per cent increase in participation in the past five years. Nowhere has this spike been more obvious than in London. Its founder, Christian Toetzke, “can’t actually explain why” we’ve become the world capital of Hyrox, but it’s really no surprise. One in five Londoners is a member of a gym and we are, for want of a better word, obsessed with fitness (quite possibly because the state of our public health is, well, not great).
